Kudos to Fresh Air host Terry Gross; she did a very fair interview with Stephen Walt yesterday, though she was careful to handle the subject with steel tongs. She kept repeating the thought that the book is “controversial.” And she…
A sharp reader has pointed out that another scholar holds the patent on an idea I found so exciting in Walt and Mearsheimer’s book. This is the idea that after the cold war–a period in which Israel was our invaluable…
Everyone in my community (opponents of the Iraq war who seek a more balanced American policy toward the Palestinians) has only one question about Walt and Mearsheimer’s forthcoming book: Will it be ignored? For instance, James Morris, who I believe…
With Walt and Mearsheimer’s Israel Lobby book about to burst onto the scene, the poverty of the existing debate over the Israel interest in American politics is demonstrated by the coverage of Freedom’s Watch, the new rightwing group spending millions…
Last night Ari Fleischer was on Hardball speaking up for Freedom’s Watch, a new organization that is buying ads to support George Bush’s war “plans” in Iraq. Fleischer warns that if we don’t stay the course, the whole region will…
A year ago I freaked out when neocon John Podhoretz, angered by something I wrote about the neocons, sent me an email saying, “We know where you live.” I got very upset about it and raised a stink in my…
Maybe Typepad’s comment mechanism is screwy–Glenn Greenwald was not able to post the following yesterday in response to my criticism of his book, A Tragic Legacy, and sent it along to me. I’m sure I’ll have some response of my…
In the last few hours I’ve watched two remarkable conversations about race on television. Last night on CBS Evening News, national correspondent Byron Pitts asked black leaders in Philadelphia whether the high murder rate there wasn’t a black problem. They…
I missed a central point when writing about Robert Pape’s theory about suicide terrorism yesterday. Pape says that an essential aspect of the practice is that suicide terrorists are venerated by their societies. They are martyrs, and are assured of…